Everyone in this discussion has been led, most likely by talking-points marketing by the FCC and ISPs, [1] to describe the destruction of net neutrality as allowing ISPs to “create fast lanes”.

This language was carefully constructed to sound like a positive, additive move: It’s building, not destroying or restricting. They want to offer faster service, not reduce the speed or priority of all existing traffic. Who could possibly be against that? They’re building fast lanes, like a highway! Everyone loves fast lanes! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Naturally, this doesn’t reflect reality at all. Only a fool would believe that the ISPs would actually create any new capacity, higher speeds, or consumer value in this process, leaving their existing service untouched…

This is not making anything faster—it’s allowing ISPs to selectively slow down traffic that they don’t strategically or financially benefit from, and only permit traffic from their partners to run at the speeds that everything runs at today.

It is a money grab by the network owners, pure and simple. Like all such money grabs, consumers lose in the end. The Internet will be less free and the barrier to entry for small, disruptive companies will be greater.